


A World in Us

by akamarykate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 01:42:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11979450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamarykate/pseuds/akamarykate
Summary: Of choices, lists, and trust.





	A World in Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluflamingo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/gifts).



_Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born._  
~ Anais Nin

* * *

Left alone with nothing much to do between medical evaluations and Fury's barrage of questions about the Red Room and the Black Widow program, she makes a list. 

• ~~I'm well, thank you~~ Fine  
• Ready to work  
• Intrigued  
• Grateful

"What the hell is this?" Barton asks when he follows her into her suite at the training facility after another round of questioning. He grabs the list off the top of the pile of paperwork on the table that serves as her desk and a dining surface and hones in on her weak spot, as he's been doing since their paths first crossed. 

Since he brought her here.

She snatches it out of his hand and crumples it into nothing, only just managing not to slip it in her mouth and swallow it. Being embarrassed by Barton might feel like being compromised on a mission, but it isn't the same thing. It doesn't carry the same weight of retribution, and it certainly doesn't carry the same punishment.

Though she's fully compromised as far as the Red Room is concerned now, she supposes. She crossed that line when she agreed to Barton's offer. 

"Seriously, Nat, what is this?" He perches on the edge of the table, trusting it with his weight. Calling her "Nat" because she's told them several of her aliases: Natalia, Natalie, Natasha, and Nadine. Not all, but enough. More than enough to damn her if the Red Room ever gets hold of her again. Or of him.

"Preparation." She lifts her chin, not sure if it's her own movement or part of the show she's been putting on since Barton brought her here. 

Since she chose to be here.

He's still waiting for her answer with that cheeky, unapologetic grin. She catches hold of her spiraling worries and mirrors his casual façade with a shrug; sits on the tiny sofa and crosses her legs. "Fury says I'm going to meet some of the other agents tomorrow during training. I suppose it's another evaluation. An audition."

Barton nods, his head tilted to one side, transparent as—well, not anything in this suite of hers. No window, and all the kitchenware is plastic or metal. Nothing she can shatter and turn into a weapon. She's not quite sure whether they're protecting her or themselves. Even the bathroom mirror is wired to alert them if it breaks. 

"And this list is?"

"In my previous encounters with Americans, I have noted that you are fond of asking each other how you are and what you are feeling. I have been developing appropriate answers."

Barton glances at the list again. "Are these how you really feel, or how you think you should feel?"

She smooths invisible wrinkles from her knee, drawing his attention to the SHIELD-issued uniform she's been given to wear. 

That she's chosen to wear.

"I tell people what they want to hear, Agent Barton. It's the best way to control them." At the frown that clouds his open expression, she adds, "If those things are true? Even better."

"Nat. You don't have to do this. Not here. In fact, you shouldn't. They'll catch you out in the screenings."

Which is no doubt what tomorrow's training is really about. "All part of the game. I look forward to it."

"So how are you?" he asks, his grin returning. "How are you really, right now?" 

"Fine. Ready to get to work. And grateful." She lets her face soften. "Most of all to you."

He snorts. "Right. So, um, you want to get out of here for a while? Get some pizza, have a beer? Do you drink beer?"

That catches her off guard, though she's sure it doesn't show. "Is such a thing allowed?"

He gets the same look on his face that she first saw when she was on the other end of the arrow aimed at her throat. The look that says he is ready to bend a few rules if they don't quite fit his moral code. Or, she will learn in the weeks to come, his desire for greasy food. "Depends on who you're asking."

* * *

Maria isn't sure what to expect when Fury orders her to spend time with Barton's stray. "Evaluate her," he commands. "I want to know if adding her to our arsenal is worth the risk." As if a human being is equivalent to a weapon.

Though if what she reads in the file is accurate, that is exactly what this woman—Natasha Romanoff seems to be her currently preferred name--has been trained to be. 

She knows Fury wants a woman's perspective, though he doesn't say as much. The men of SHIELD, in Maria's experience, are nearly as susceptible to the kinds of tricks in Romanoff's arsenal as the men she played them on in her previous work. 

She'll be discreet. This is an informal evaluation that will be debriefed in a private conversation with Fury, not written down. She inserts herself into a refresher session on hand-to-hand combat with a dozen other agents, male and female. Barton is there, grumbling that he doesn't need this, that the whole reason he uses a bow is to avoid this, but so obviously watching over Romanoff that even Agent Ortiz, who's leading the class, seems to know. She assigns Barton to spar with one of the younger agents on one side of the room and puts Romanoff in the farthest corner away from him. 

"Hill, you're up," Ortiz points her to the mat where Romanoff is waiting, poised to either take down her opponent or flee the room so fast she'll escape not only the compound, but gravity itself. 

Force of nature, Maria thinks. She's proven right when she approaches Romanoff with her hand out, ready to introduce herself. Romanoff takes her down in a fluid move that leaves Maria blinking up at the ceiling before she feels the impact in the small of her back.

"Hi," Maria gasps out as Romanoff's face, pale against the frame of bright auburn hair, eclipses the ceiling. She holds out her hand again. "Agent Hill."

Romanoff takes her hand and pulls her up. "Sorry. I thought you were making an offensive move."

"Handshake. Same difference," Maria says lightly. She assumes a sparring stance, ready this time. "Let's get to work." 

They spend the next fifteen minutes or so working through the series of moves, drawn from the combination of martial arts, boxing, and street fighting that's Ortiz's specialty. Romanoff seems to have memorized the demo sequence perfectly, but she also seems to think she made a misstep by taking Maria down. After a couple bouts that come out as draws, Maria takes Romanoff down once, and then again, but she can tell, as much from Romanoff's shadowed, closed-off eyes as from the coiled strength in her body, so tightly controlled that faint lines appear at the corners of her mouth, that Romanoff is holding back.

"You don’t have to let me win," Maria finally says, offering her a hand up. Romanoff completely ignores it, springing to her feet with a bounce that defies physics. She clearly doesn't need the training, but she just as clearly also knows, if the intelligence in her eyes is anything to go by, exactly why she is in the class and exactly what Maria is there to do. But when Maria asks if she wants to get coffee in the mess afterward, Romanoff says yes with a just-barely-there shrug. 

"I know what this is," she says when they're settled at a corner table. She dumps three sugar packets into the coffee. 

"You do?"

"Please don't play games with me, Agent Hill. You have risen to become Director Fury's right-hand woman faster than even Coulson. Perhaps you are his left hand?" she adds with a faint smirk. "He wants to know what you think about me. Whether I am worth the considerable risk he's taking in trusting me."

Feral wariness, Maria expected. Maybe even a bit of culture shock, ameliorated by the military structures of SHIELD. Smugness, sure, or polished professionalism. Not this direct openness which could very well be just another one of Romanoff's masks, worn and discarded as easily as her names.

Maria sips at her own coffee, straight black after years of training herself not to take cream because cream isn't always available in the field. Wishes for that cream for the first time in a long time, wonders if the sugar is part of the show Romanoff's putting on, whether it's a defensive shield, an automatic posture, or something more sinister. "Would you think less of me if I told you you're right?"

"Of course not. You are a soldier, following orders. I hear you're very good at that."

"What the hell has Barton told you?" 

"He has told me much, but I take actions into consideration, far more than gossip." Romanoff sips mildly at her coffee. 

"Okay, fine. I am here to evaluate you. Fury doesn't give his trust away easily."

"I have noticed."

Maria leans back. "All right then. Let's get started." She decides to do Romanoff the favor of not asking her to repeat the story she's told Barton, Fury, and Coulson at least five times each. "How are you feeling about being part of SHIELD?"

"I am fine, thank you. Ready to get to work."

"Mm-hmm. What's your favorite movie?"

Romanoff blinks, and Maria allows herself a moment of satisfaction at having set the super spy back on her heels. "I have seen many of the western classics."

"No, but what's your favorite? The one you'll always stop to watch when you scroll by it, even if it's cut up by commercials?"

"I don't watch much television." Romanoff draws inward for a moment, as if she's a robot searching some internal database. "I found Fargo to be a revealing portrait of American culture."

The noise that escapes Maria is part laugh, part snort, and all disbelief. 

"What's wrong?" Romanoff asks, and Maria makes a mental note of the look on her face, not because she said Fargo or because she's so clearly trying to read the room, but because she's let her guard slip enough to show that Maria's response matters to her, that giving an appropriate answer matters to her. She's trying to fit in because she _wants_ to, not because it's crucial to her mission. Maybe she's more than one of Barton's strays. 

* * *

Friendship, Natasha decides after several months of chats with Hill over coffee, of informal encounters in between missions, of conversations that seem to have no ulterior purpose at all, is a kind of surrender. A long, slow surrender of bits and pieces of personalities, exchanged with very little thought or planning, at least on anyone else's part. Hill reveals her favorite books, childhood memories, opinions about food and celebrities and music and, because this is the United States, sports, without forethought or guile. These conversations create touchstones, points of commonality that seed their friendship and allow it to grow despite Natasha's wariness.

Natasha has to be more careful with those pieces than Maria Hill does. She continues to make lists despite Barton's teasing, planning what to discuss in advance of the coffee dates, and afterward, noting the handful of times she realizes something she says is authentic and genuine. Those unexpected realizations that certain ideas and preferences can be hers and hers alone, not the Red Room's, not SHIELD's, not Natalia's or Natalie's or Nadine's, always catch her off guard. 

• Grilled cheese sandwiches  
• Corvettes  
• Prokofiev's Cinderella  
• Brightly colored shoes  
• Leather jackets  
• Raspberry sorbet  


It is a long, slow process to sort out what is hers and what is her programming. Sometimes the realizations surprise her, but as SHIELD allows her—as she claims—more independence, she becomes more secure in the preferences that are hers and hers alone. 

One Friday, when they're both between missions, Hill invites her over for dinner. Natasha thinks about calling Barton to let him know where she'll be, a habit born of their increasingly close partnership, but he's off on a mission in Venezuela, something about Hydra operatives on coffee plantations. For once Fury didn't send her along. She supposes he's still figuring out how much he can trust her, how long he can make her leash. 

Hill's home is no SHIELD-provided dormitory. It's tucked away in a nondescript neighborhood studded with brownstone row houses and subdivided Victorians; she owns a floor in one of the brownstones. The decoration is not exactly what Natasha would have expected from a soldier like Hill. The furniture is plump and plain, not a lot of decorations but everything is cushy and comfortable.

They eat coq au vin, another piece of information Natasha adds to the list of things Hill has surrendered: she loves to cook.

After the meal, Hill hands her a refill of her wine and a bowl of popcorn and asks, "Movie roulette?" Natasha is sure, at least ninety percent, that Hill is joking, that there won't be any bullets involved in this activity. 

She wonders, as usual, if Hill is still testing her. 

"Here's the deal," Hill says as they settle in on opposite ends of the deeply cushioned sofa. "We turn on the television and one of us scrolls through channels. When we see a movie we want to watch, we stop, even if it's in the middle, even if we've seen it a hundred times. We watch until the end, or until we can't stand it anymore, and then the next person gets the remote."

A spot of cold blooms in the small of Natasha's back. It's a response, she's learned through months of deconditioning and therapy, to something that happened in the Red Room. She's not entirely sure what, but she's learned how to deal with it when it arises at inappropriate times. She acknowledges it, takes a sip of the wine to warm it, and makes her tone casual. "Why would you see any movie more than once?"

"That's what Barton always asks, too." The corners of Hill's mouth curl up, and it seems like genuine fondness at the mention of his name. This is another item on the list of reasons Natasha likes Hill. "For me, it's a comfort thing. Knowing what's going to happen, if I like the way it goes, it's like looking at photos from when I was a kid, or eating Rice Krispie treats." She leaves that open-ended; Natasha nods and makes a mental note to find Rice Krispie treats the next time she goes shopping for groceries. "The idea is to stumble across the classics, or the anti-classics, or your favorites at random. Usually we end up seeing the last fifteen minutes of six or seven different movies, depending on how they're staggered on the schedule."

"When do the bullets come in?"

Hill turns wide eyes to her over the rim of her wine glass and chokes on the sip she's just taken. 

"You said it was roulette," Natasha points out, then lets a smile tease her lips, to show she's joking. Hill relaxes and downs another swallow of wine.

"To tell you the truth, watching some of these movies is worse than death," Hill fires back. "Especially if your boy Barton has the remote."

"He isn't mine," Natasha points out mildly.

"Do you want him to be?"

Natasha shrugs. Hill waits for a moment, then turns on the television before asking, "What exactly is it you want, Romanoff?"

"I have not worked that out yet," she admits.

Hill scrolls through the channels so fast Natasha can't work out what she's missing, stopping at a scene in which a man wakes up and smashes a radio alarm clock. " _Groundhog Day_! Talk about comfort food."

The man does not, as Natasha half-fears he will, eat any groundhogs. 

As they watch movies, or parts of them, she notices that all the characters have goals. They don't always achieve them, but the stories are built on what the characters do in pursuit of those goals. She makes a mental list of these goals so she can compare them to her own and perhaps choose some of them for herself:

• Ending a cycle of magically repeating days by finding true love  
• Becoming popular among high school students  
• Recovering artifacts stolen by Nazis  
• Slaying a dragon  
• Avenging murdered loved ones (always women)  
• Surviving an interminable but highly entertaining car chase

By the end of the night they've gone through two bottles of wine and at least that many bowls of popcorn, and Natasha has been exposed a number films of the past thirty years. Or parts of them. She knows more about American pop culture than she did before, and a few more things about Hill. 

• She went to three high school proms, only once with a date.  
• Her brother is a college professor.  
• She likes to grab huge handfuls of popcorn from the bowl, then eat them one kernel at a time.

"Which one was your favorite?" Hill asks as they clean up. 

Natasha freezes, her hand over the popcorn scattered around the couch on the hardwood floor. Hears a voice from the distant past, a granite blade demanding, _"What did you learn about the West from watching this example of their degenerate cinema, Natalia? How will you use it to defeat our enemies and bring glory to the Soviet Union?"_

"Natasha. Hey, Nat, you okay? I'm sorry, I thought it was a simple question."

She blinks up, realizes the pressure on her shoulder is from Hill's hand, not Madame's, that she's sitting on the floor with her knees curled tight into her chest, praying for the correct answer.

But she's not in the Red Room. This is Hill's living room, and she's made a fool of herself. She uncurls herself, scoops up the popcorn, shakes off Hill's steadying hand. "No, it's—I'm fine. Flashback." She darts a quick look at Hill, sees her concern melt into—what? Pity? Or maybe it's compassion. Both have been directed at her since she's joined SHIELD. She still has difficulty telling them apart.

Hill takes a step back. "Oh, god, I'm sorry."

"No need to be. You couldn't have known it was coming. I certainly didn't." Natasha brushes the dirty popcorn from her hands into the bowl and takes it to the kitchen, dumps the unpopped kernels and the bits from the floor into the trash can. "The one with the coma patient and the woman who lied to his family," she tells Hill, who's followed her but keeps a careful distance as she rinses out the wine glasses. 

" _While You Were Sleeping_. Really? I never guessed you'd be a romcom fan."

Natasha leans back against the counter, wishing she could slip the disconcerted, unnerved feeling the memory's left her with into the trash with the leftover popcorn. It's easier to push it away with Hill there, willing to pretend it never happened, than the flashbacks that overcome her when she's alone. "The woman thought she wanted one thing, but it wasn't real. She had to realize what she truly wanted before her life could change for the better."

"That makes sense," Hill acknowledges, her smile and her stance almost as casual as she thinks they are. She's more tactician than spy, Natasha has learned over the past few months, and moments like this are the proof. "I do like knowing I'm not the only one who's fallen for the wrong person based on nothing but good looks."

They go on cleaning as if Natasha's slip-up didn't happen, but when she says good-night, Hill surprises her with a quick hug. "You've got time, you know," she says instead of explaining herself. "To figure out what it is you want. Most of the time I still don't know, so, you know…you're not alone."

"Thank you." It is sincere. In this case, she thinks, surrender is the correct choice.

The choice she wants to make. 

* * * 

"You kept Fury's secret. You knew he wasn't dead and you knew what thinking he was did to me." Natasha paces in front of Maria, who's joined her in a small alcove of the underground complex where they, along with Fury, Steve, and Sam Wilson, are preparing to take down SHIELD's new helicarriers. Maria has to admit, Nat held it together pretty well in front of Fury, but now she's letting it all out, all the grief that's turned to rage. Though she knows better than to underestimate the Black Widow's anger, Maria is more than a little bit gratified that her friend feels safe enough to unleash it on her.

"I thought you understood," she tells Natasha. "We did what we had to do. SHIELD was compromised."

Natasha spits out a sentence in Russian like a curse, then translates. "I _did_ understand that. I am not an idiot."

"Then why are you angry?"

"I thought you understood that _I_ was not compromised. I thought we were better friends than that."

"Nat."

"I wanted to trust you, Hill." The last name lands with a specific weight Maria can't help but feel. Maybe this is more than a bit of safety valve venting.

Maria takes a deep breath and waits for Natasha to stop. To turn to her and really look at her when she asks, "Do you still want that?"

Maybe Natasha's been hanging out with Rogers too much, because she hesitates, closes her eyes as if to give herself a moment of privacy, to answer the question for herself before she admits, "Yes. I do." 

"That's good, because you can. I mean, go ahead, be angry. You deserve that much. But I hope you won't stay angry forever. I did save your life, you know."

Natasha looks down and watches her thumb rub the sleeve hem of the blue suit she's put on for the next phase of the operation. "Would you do it again? Even knowing everything I've done?" She looks up, and there's more than usual left unsaid floating in the air between them. "Even if I told you that I've done things that are just as bad as what the Winter Soldier's done?"

"Yes." Maria thinks about adding, "Of course I would, dummy, because I've seen how much you've changed," but figures that much is implied.

"Would you lie to me again?"

"If I had to, yes." She leaves unsaid that SHIELD won't exist after this is over, that the need to lie to each other, the hierarchy of loyalty that bound her to keep Fury's secret from Natasha, will be gone.

"Thanks for being honest." Natasha smooths the bright blue skirt that's part of her disguise for this part of the mission. Even with the net disguising her face, anyone who looks twice at the rest of her is going to know she isn't Councilwoman Hawley. "I mean it, Hill. Maria. Thank you for everything."

"This isn't the end of anything," Maria tries lightly. But she knows, she sees in the look Natasha's giving her now, unguarded and pained, that for this woman, who's fought off the shackles of the Red Room over and over to become her ally, the end of SHIELD really will be the end of everything she's come to know and trust. She tries to throw her a lifeline, slender though it may be. "If you ever need anything, you can call me." 

Natasha's expression settles into a slow, sad smile. "Thanks."

* * * *

After it's all over, for the time being anyway, and she's walked away from Fury, from SHIELD, from a Congressional hearing, and from Rogers and Wilson, Natasha gets behind the wheel of her Corvette and starts driving west. Somewhere along the way, in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, she realizes three things.

• She does understand why Hill lied.  
• A small part of her is still angry about it.  
• She's angry because, for the first time in as long as she can remember, she wanted something for herself.   
• She wanted a friend.

She spent so long being a weapon, and then being grateful to work for the people who freed her from that, that she never stopped to think about what she wanted. That she could want, like the characters in all those movies she watched with Hill.

With Maria. Who'd somehow become her friend. 

Allowing herself to want, to desire, that's all new. She knows it's possible, thanks to Barton and Hill and Rogers, and even, she supposes, thanks to Fury. 

But knowing that she can want and choosing what it is she wants are two different matters. With a new life, a new set of opportunities and challenges, set before her, she decides it's best to start small. When she hits a city big enough to have a mall, somewhere in Ohio, she stops the car. For the first time in her life, she walks into a store and chooses an outfit without a mission in mind.

* * * 

It turns out Natasha isn't as free as she thought.

Even though SHIELD has disbanded, those who stayed loyal to what the agency once claimed to stand for are still working to take down Hydra, and Nick Fury is still coordinating those efforts. When he calls her about an orphanage in Sri Lanka that's a front for Hydra operations, she agrees to go without a second thought.

So does Hill. They say tentative, chilly hellos, but by the time they reach Sri Lanka they are back in the comfortable rhythms of the work they do best, and Natasha starts to think this could all end, once the children are safe, in a cup of coffee in some distant café, in a conversation about fashion and music and cars.

Instead, Maria ends up in the direct line of fire when they're ambushed and takes a bullet to the side. Between Natasha and the medics at their rendezvous point, they manage to stabilize her and get her to a med center, but there are Hydra agents on their tail the whole time. After a call to Fury, who agrees to make the necessary arrangements, Natasha brings the patient to one of her safe houses before she's shaken off the anesthetic. 

While she watches Maria sleep, she writes a new list. "That's the thing with feelings. You gotta name 'em to claim 'em!" one overly cheerful therapist suggested a few months ago. Natasha didn't go back after her first visit, but the advice has, to her great annoyance, stuck with her.

• Worried  
• Concerned  
• Afraid?  
• Relieved  
• Grateful

This, then, is the surrender she's made.

That she's chosen.

Gradual, uneven, incomplete. But it's a beginning.

Maria groans and opens her eyes. "Where?" she asks blearily.

"Alberta." Nat pushes a button on her untraceable phone—thank you, Stark Industries—to let Fury and the doctors know Maria's awake. A text will come in a moment or two with directions and instructions for medications and aftercare. "You're safe."

Natasha moves to the small kitchen, separated from the living room where Maria's bed is pulled up next to the fireplace by a butcher block island. She puts on water to make tea for herself and gets some broth from a cooler to warm for Maria, who pushes herself to sit up. "I feel like I got hit by a truck."

"You'll be okay." Natasha isn't sure if relief is evident in her voice. She isn't sure if it should be hidden. 

"Hydra?"

"I lost them after the hospital. Don't worry, they won't find us here. SHIELD never found me, back in the day. We have supplies for a few days." Leaving the kettle and broth to warm on the campstove, she comes to sit next to Maria, who takes the medication and sips from the water glass Natasha offers.

"This is your place, isn't it?" Though her only reaction to being shot was a whispered, urgent, "I'm hit," through the coms, her voice is as hoarse as if she screamed through the entire surgery. 

"How can you tell?" It's not supposed to look like Natasha's place. It's not supposed to look like anyone's place.

"It's you. The way you move. You're comfortable here."

"I suppose I like it." She draws the curtains open to let in the low evening light and the view of the rolling grasslands, and, more importantly, the sky. She does like being here; likes being able to see what's coming. Turning around, she meets Maria's surprisingly steady gaze. "I suppose I want to be here. With you."

"Want because you do want, or because you think you should want?"

"I do want." Nat opens the cupboard doors on the wall opposite the bed, revealing a decent sized television set, sending thanks, again, to Stark technology. She perches on the edge of the bed, opposite Maria's wounded side, and hands Maria the remote. "I also want you to scoot over and pick a movie." 

While Natasha settles in next to her, Maria pushes some buttons, lands on the ending of a movie called _Clueless_. She doesn't stay awake long enough to choose another. Natasha slides the remote from her loose hand and cycles aimlessly through the channels, content to be here, now. Content with the choices she's made; content with wanting more.


End file.
